Consumer Technology Can Help Your Business. Just Be Careful

This weekend, I’ve been at South by South West (SXSW) . The exhibits, as expected, showcased dozens of companies offering a variety of tools and services for location based mobile services, video, photo and more.

Many of them were not specifically for the small business market.

However, I believe that many of them can be good testing grounds to consider how you might leverage the technologies (such as mobile marketing) these new services represent, in your business.

For example, there was a neat service, Near, that will text you a reminder when you are near a location that you need to do something at. Let’s say once a week you go to a local mall to buy batteries. Maybe while on the way to the mall you pass the local deli and always forget to buy milk. This service will alert you to do that.

So while many of the new services are NOT for businesses I would suggest you try them out, play with them, and use them so you can get ideas and be familiar with them.

Your customers are already using these services for fun (and I’m sure you are too) your only limited by your imagination and creativity how you use them for your business.

I am not advocating that you run the core of your business processes, through free, new, consumer technologies – just suggested that you try them out so you are familiar and knowledgeable about what’s on the market. And to stimulate your creativity on the amazing possibilities available to your business.